ACT II. SCENE I. Before Page's house. Enter MRS. PAGE, with a letter. Mrs. Page. What! have I 'scaped love-letters in the holyday time of my beauty, and am I now `a subject for them? Let me see: [reads. I; Ask me no reason why I love you; for though love use reason for his precisian,' he admits him not for his counsellor. You are not young, no more am ; go to then, there's sympathy: you are merry, so am I; Ha! ha! then there's more sympathy: you love sack, and so do I; Would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, mistress Page, (at the least, if the love of a soldier can suffice) that I love thee. I will not say, pity me, 'tis not a soldier-like phrase; but I say, love me. By me, Thine own true knight, By day or night, Or kind of light, any With all his might, For thee to fight. JOHN FALSTAFF.' What a Herod of Jewry is this!--O wicked, wicked Though love permit reason to tell what is fit to be done. By precisian is meant one who pretends to extraordinary sanctity. world!- -one that is well nigh worn to pieces with age, to show himself a young gallant! What an unweighed1 behaviour hath this Flemish drunkard picked (with the devil's name) out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my company!-What should I say to him?—I was then frugal of my mirth :-Heaven forgive me!—Why, I'll exhibit a bill in the parliament for the putting down of fat men. How shall I be revenged on him? for revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings. Enter MRS. FORD. Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page! trust me, I was going to your house. Mrs. Page. And, trust me, I was coming to you. You look very ill. Mrs. Ford. Nay, I'll ne'er believe that; I have to show to the contrary. Mrs. Page. 'Faith, but you do, in my mind. show you to the contrary. O, mistress Page, give me some counsel ! Mrs. Page. What's the matter, woman? Mrs. Ford. O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honor! Mrs. Page. Hang the trifle, woman: take the honor What is it?dispense with trifles ;-what is it? Mrs. Ford. If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment, or so, I could be knighted. Mrs. Page. What?-thou liest !-Sir Alice Ford! -These knights will hack; and so thou shouldst not alter the articie of thy gentry.1 Mrs. Ford. We burn day-light: 2-here, read, read;-perceive how I might be knighted.-I shall think the worse of fat men, as long as I have an eye to make difference of men's liking. And yet he would not swear; praised women's modesty; and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness, that I would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words but they do no more adhere and keep place together, than the hundredth psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves. What tempest, I trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I think, the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease.-Did you ever hear the like? ་ Mrs. Page. Letter for letter, but that the name of Page and Ford differs!-To thy great comfort in These knights will hack, i. e. will become cheap and vulgar, and therefore I advise vou not to sully vour gentry by becoming one. 2 We have more proof than we want. Condition of body. A favorite tune in our author's time. |